The panel was set about one and a half metres off the ground. I drew closer, growing more and more astonished by the beauty of the composition, until my face was all but pressed to the surface. It was extraordinary. Two metres wide by three metres high. By candlelight, the colours gained a weight and a depth that made my chest tighten. I felt as if it were the first time I was looking at a real painting, as if I'd never seen anything so beautiful. So many years had passed since I'd worked with my teacher that I'd quite forgotten the feeling of standing face to face with an ancient piece, without museum lighting, without a line to keep me from getting too close and touching the craquelure, smelling the age of the materials, detecting the brushstrokes under the layers of glazing and the patina. It was like pushing past the imposture of sanctity and stepping into the painting itself, taking hold of it, all the genius that lay behind the image and served like a precision mechanism: the gears of a clock that had been hidden for hundreds of years but never stopped ticking.